Callum
THIRTY-THREE
THEN
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
This was bad. Disaster level bad. Tsunami without the warning level bad.
Damien climbed off the bed and put himself between me and Sam, with his hands up in surrender.
“I can explain,” he started, but Sam just glared at him, then looked through him like he didn’t even exist to focus on me.
“I don’t care that you’re gay. I care that you’re a friend-stealing sack of shit. Damien is my friend. My best friend. And you couldn’t let me even have that, could you? What else are you going to take from me?”
“I—what?” Color me confused. “I didn’t take anything from you. Damien is still your friend.”
Sam scoffed and I looked at him, really looked at him, and I realized with startling clarity that Sam hated me.
I didn’t know if it was a new emotion or something that had been building for a while now, but I could feel it like it was another presence in the room.
Just the three of us and Sam’s bad attitude along for the ride.
“Don’t you dare even speak his name,” Sam ground out. “After what the two of you did. Going behind my back like this.”
“We wanted to tell you,” Damien said, and Sam’s head whipped around to face him so fast that I thought Sam looked possessed or something. I’d never seen him this angry before. This hurt.
“There shouldn’t be anything to tell.” Venom dripped from every word.
“There shouldn’t be anything going on between you.
I bet you thought you were so smart, too smart to get caught.
But the two of you are fucking obvious. Fucking sick.
I mean, Damien’s practically your brother. ” Sam’s face turned into a snarl.
“Damien might be a brother to you, but he’s never been that for me.”
“And you’ve never been that for me,” Sam fired back. “You’re just this fucking fake. Did you know that? This fake-ass brother. This fucking betrayer. A fucking thief and a liar.”
Sam’s words shouldn’t have hurt as much as they did, but he knew where to strike for maximum impact.
“Sam,” Damien tried to speak, but Sam lashed out at him, shoving him hard in the chest with both hands.
“Get out of my house. Get out.” He shoved him again, then grabbed his arm and started trying to force him from the room. “Get out!”
“Sam, calm down.” I started to rise up out of bed, and then he was there, pushing me back down.
“Don’t tell me to calm down.” The look in his eyes was wild and full of hatred. He stepped around Damien and closed in on me. His eyes narrowed into slits and he stared at me like he’d never seen anything more offensive in his life. “You. Ruined. Everything.”
He wasn’t shouting. I thought there would have been more shouting, but Sam was ice cold. He looked at me like I was a stranger. No. An enemy.
Sam’s hostility had been something I felt brewing in the background for a while now. At first, I’d tried to talk to him about it, but then I decided whatever. It didn’t matter. He was just a moody little bitch. But maybe it went beyond that.
“He’s my friend, Callum.”
The rage poured off Sam in waves, and I knew there was no reasoning with him.
“How could you? My own brother.”
The shock of being discovered was quickly wearing off, and the longer Sam scowled at me the more I wanted to punch him in the face. Would it help? Absolutely not. Would it be satisfying? Probably.
“You say that word like you think it means anything. You haven’t wanted shit to do with me in a couple years, Sam. So why should I care about that now?”
Sam turned. “Damien, you need to leave.”
“Only if Callum tells me to go.” Damien tilted his chin up in defiance, though I could see the heartbreak etched into his face. This wasn’t what he wanted to have happen. If Damien pushed back too much, there would be no salvaging their friendship.
“We can talk later, Damien. You should go.” I hated that I couldn’t cross the room and go to him. That I couldn’t kiss him goodbye or even look at him too long.
Sam’s gaze was still sharp as a knife and pointed at me. I didn’t care if Sam never forgave me, but I hated the fact that I’d ruined their friendship. When Damien didn’t move, I tried again.
“Let me try to fix this,” I said, staring at him, hoping he understood what I couldn’t say in front of Sam, who still vibrated with rage. He was one step away from exploding.
Damien nodded, then slipped out of the room. Sam and I stood there, not moving, barely even breathing until the front door clicked shut.
“I get that you’re mad—”
Sam cut me off. “You don’t get anything.
So let me tell you how this is going to go.
Damien won’t be coming around anymore, and you won’t be going near him.
Damien is my friend, and if you want it to stay that way, you’ll respect that.
If you so much as look at him, he’ll have nothing and no one.
You think he’s really going to follow you to college?
You think you’re going to have this happy little fantasy where you, what, live across campus from each other or maybe one year you’ll share a dorm room.
And maybe he’ll find out what a piece of shit you are, but he won’t ever leave you because you’re all he has.
He’ll resent the fuck out of you, Callum. ”
There was a pause as the weight of his words sank into my bones.
I could live with a lot, but I couldn’t live with being the reason Damien was miserable. I could handle Sam hating me, but I didn’t want Sam to hate him too.
“Stay away from him, Callum. I mean it.”
Sam turned and left the room, and I stood there, reeling, not knowing what to do.
I didn’t want to let go of Damien, but if things between us didn’t work out, Sam was right. Damien would have no one. He’d always struggled to make friends, but part of me wondered if he hadn’t bothered because he’d had Sam.
Fucking Sam.
I fucking hated him.
If I let go of Damien, I’d be crushed, but I’d only lose Damien. Sam was already lost to me. He’d decided to hate me a long time ago, and I’d never understood why. It hadn’t been important enough to me to investigate.
If I kept Damien, he still had to stay here and finish school, and he’d be alone.
Fuck.
Fuckfuckfuck.
My knees gave out, and I sank down to the floor. I grabbed my hoodie that I’d discarded earlier and buried my face in it, biting down on the fabric to keep myself from screaming as my heart tore itself in half.
I didn’t know what to do.
Well, I did. But I hated it.
And I hated Sam.
And maybe even myself.